John Cho admits he was bummed by ‘Cowboy Bebop’ cancellation

John Cho is opening up about the sudden cancellation of Netflix’s live-action anime adaption Cowboy Bebop.

The show’s sole 10-episode season, starring Cho as the protagonist space bounty hunter Spike Spiegel, proved divisive among critics and fans alike and was canceled in Dec. 2021, just a month after it premiered.

Cho made the remarks in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in which he was promoting his upcoming book about the 1992 L.A. riots/uprising aimed at middle-grade readers, called Troublemaker.

When asked how he felt about Cowboy Bebop‘s sudden cancellation — as well as the outpouring of fans’ emotions toward both him and the show — Cho said he put a lot of his life into the series. Having been injured while shooting the show, then taking a year off to recover from surgery and resuming thereafter, he described the experience as a “huge mountain for me to climb.”

“It was just a huge event in my life and it was suddenly over. It was very shocking and I was bummed,” said Cho, who had also moved his entire family to New Zealand since the show was filmed there.

However, Cho also said he was “very warmed” by some of the responses from fans, saying he wishes he could’ve “contacted everybody and gotten hugs.”

“I’m mystified a little bit about how you can connect with people that you don’t know doing your work, but I won’t question it. I will value it and treasure it. I’m just really deeply appreciative that anyone would care. It’s stunning to me.”

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop did have its defenders, sparking a petition to renew it after the cancellation was announced. However, those who disliked the show were also quite passionate about their cause, prompting a counter-petition to keep it canned. But the pro-live-action Bebop petition towers over the nay-sayers, at a whopping 146,259 signatures compared to the 12,710 anti-live-action Bebop signatures, as of press time.